PSYCHOLOGY(8th Edition) Social Psychology Notes
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Social thinking involves ______________________________________________, especially
when they engage in doing things that are unexpected.
Attributing Behavior to Persons or to Situations
________________________________: Fritz Heider (1958) suggested that we have a tendency
to give __________________________ explanations for someone’s behavior, often by crediting
either the __________________ or the person’s ___________________________.
Attributing Behavior to Persons or to Situations
A teacher may wonder whether a child’s hostility reflects an aggressive personality
(dispositional attribution) or is a reaction to stress or abuse (a situational attribution).
_______________________________________ Error
The tendency to ___________________________________________________________________
and __________________________________________________________ in analyzing the
behaviors of others leads to the fundamental attribution error.
Effects of Attribution
How we explain someone’s behavior
______________________________________________________________.
Attitude
A belief and feeling that predisposes a person to respond in a particular way to objects, other
people, and events.
_______________________________________________
Our attitudes predict our behaviors imperfectly because other factors, including the external
situation, also influence behavior.
Not only do people stand for what they believe in (attitude), they start believing in what
they stand for.
Small Request – Large Request
In the Korean War, Chinese communists solicited cooperation from US army prisoners by
asking them to carry out small errands. By
__________________________________________________________________________________
______.
Role Playing Affects Attitudes
_____________________________ (1972) assigned the roles of guards and prisoners to
random students and found that guards and prisoners developed role- appropriate attitudes.
Actions Can Affect Attitudes
Why do actions affect attitudes? One explanation is that when our attitudes and actions are
opposed, we experience tension. This is called _______________________________________.
Social Influence
The greatest contribution of social psychology is its study of
_____________________________________, and actions and the way they are
___________________________________________________________.
Conformity & Obedience
____________________________________, modeled by one followed by another. We follow
behavior of others to conform.
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Other behaviors may be an expression of compliance (obedience) toward authority.
_______________________________________________________________
Conformity: Adjusting one’s behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard
(Chartrand & Bargh, 1999).
Group Pressure & Conformity
An influence resulting from one’s willingness to accept others’ opinions about reality.
Conditions that Strengthen Conformity
One is made to ______________________________________ or insecure.
The group has at ___________________________________________________________.
The group is _______________________________________________.
One _____________________________________________________________.
One has no ________________________________________________________________.
The group ______________________________________________________________________.
One’s ___________________________________________ respect for a social standard.
Reasons for Conformity
Normative Social Influence: Influence resulting from a person’s desire to
__________________________________ or _____________________________________________.
A person may respect normative behavior because there may be a severe price to pay if not
respected.
Informative Social Influence
Baron and colleagues (1996) made students do an eyewitness identification task. If the task
was easy (lineup exposure 5 sec.), conformity was low in comparison to a difficult (1/2 sec.
exposure) task.
Obedience
People ___________________________________________. How would they respond to
outright command?
o
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________________________________________ designed a study that investigates the
effects of authority on obedience
Milgram’s Study: Results
Individual Resistance
__________________________________ of the individuals in Milgram’s study resisted social
coercion.
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Lessons from the Conformity and Obedience Studies
In both Ash's and Milgram's studies, participants were pressured to follow their standards
and be responsive to others.
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In Milgram’s study, participants were torn between hearing the victims pleas and the
experimenter’s orders
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Group Influence
How do groups affect our behavior? Social psychologists study various groups:
One person affecting another
Families
Teams
Committees
Individual Behavior in the Presence of Others
________________________________: Refers to improved performance on tasks in the
presence of others. Triplett (1898) noticed cyclists’ race times were faster when they
competed against others than when they just raced against the clock.
_______________________________
The tendency of an individual in a group to exert ______________________________ toward
attaining a common goal than when tested individually (Latané, 1981).
___________________________________
The ____________________________________ and _______________________________traint
in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity.
Effects of Group Interaction
_________________________________________ enhances a group’s prevailing attitudes
through a discussion. If a group is like-minded, discussion strengthens its prevailing
opinions and attitudes.
____________________________________
A mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group
overrides the realistic appraisal of alternatives.
Power of Individuals
The power of social influence is enormous, but so is the power of the individual.
Non-violent fasts and appeals by Gandhi led to the independence of India from the British.
Social Relations
Social psychology teaches us how we relate to one another through prejudice, aggression,
and conflict to attraction, and altruism and peacemaking.
_________________________________
Simply called “prejudgment,” a prejudice is an unjustifiable (usually negative) attitude
toward a group and its members. Prejudice is often directed towards different cultural,
ethnic, or gender groups.
Reign of Prejudice
Prejudice works at the conscious and [more at] the unconscious level. Therefore, prejudice is
more like a knee-jerk response than a conscious decision.
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How Prejudiced are People?
Over the duration of time many prejudices against interracial marriage, gender,
homosexuality, and minorities have decreased.
Racial & Gender Prejudice
Americans today express much less racial and gender prejudice, but
__________________________________.
Race
Nine out of ten white respondents were slow when responding to words like “peace” or
“paradise” when they saw a black individual’s photo compared to a white individual’s
photo (Hugenberg & Bodenhausen, 2003).
Gender
Most women still live in more poverty than men. About 100,000,000 women are missing in
the world. There is a preference for male children in China and India, even with sex-selected
abortion outlawed.
Gender
Although prejudice prevails against women, more people feel positively toward women
than men. Social Roots of
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Prejudice
Why does prejudice arise?
Social Inequalities
Social Divisions
Emotional Scapegoating
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Social Inequality
Prejudice develops when people ______________________________________________ money,
power, and prestige, and ____________________________________. Social inequality
increases prejudice.
In and Out Groups
__________________________: People with whom one shares a common identity.
__________________________: Those perceived as different from one’s ingroup. Ingroup
Bias: The tendency to favor one’s own group.
Emotional Roots of Prejudice
Prejudice provides an _________________________________ [emotion] by providing
someone to blame. After 9/11 many people lashed out against innocent Arab-Americans.
Cognitive Roots of Prejudice
One way we ___________________________________________________________. We
categorize people into groups by stereotyping them.
Cognitive Roots of Prejudice
The _____________________________________________________________________________,
and
__________________________________________________________________________________
_________ (the just-world phenomenon).
Hindsight Bias
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After learning an outcome, the tendency to believe that we could have predicted it
beforehand may contribute to blaming the victim and forming a prejudice against them.
Aggression
Aggression can be any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy.
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It may be done reactively out of hostility or proactively as a calculated means to an end.
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The Biology of Aggression
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Research shows that aggressive behavior emerges from the interaction of
______________________________________________.
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Influences Genetic Influences: Animals have _________________________________ for sport
and at times for research. ____________________________show aggression may be genetic. In
men, aggression is possibly linked to the Y chromosome.
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Neural Influences: Some centers in the brain, especially the
______________________________ (amygdala) and the frontal lobe, are intimately involved
with aggression.
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______________________________________: Animals with diminished amounts of
testosterone (castration) become docile, and if injected with testosterone aggression increases.
Prenatal exposure to testosterone also increases aggression in female hyenas
The Psychology of Aggression - Four psychological factors that influence aggressive
behavior are:
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Dealing with ___________________________________
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Learning ______________________________________________________________
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___________________________________ models of aggression
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Acquiring ___________________________________________________
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Aversive Events - Studies in which animals and humans experience unpleasant events
reveal that those made miserable
________________________________________________________________
Even environmental temperature can lead to aggressive acts. Murders and rapes
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__________________________ temperature in Houston.
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________________________________________________ A principle in which frustration
(caused by the _______________________ of an attempt to achieve a desired goal) creates
anger, which can generate aggression.
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Learning that Aggression is Rewarding - When aggression leads to desired outcomes, one
learns to be aggressive. This is shown in both animals and humans.
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Cultures that favor violence breed violence. Scotch-Irish settlers in the South had more
violent tendencies than their Quaker Dutch counterparts in the Northeast of the US.
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_______________________________________ of Aggression Sexually coercive men are
promiscuous and hostile in their relationships with women. This coerciveness has increased
due to television viewing of R- and X-rated movies.
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Acquiring Social Scripts
The _______________________________________ and generates mental tapes in the minds of
the viewers. When confronted with new situations individuals may rely on such social
scripts. If social scripts are violent in nature, _____________________________________.
Do Video Games Teach or Release Violence?
The general consensus on violent video games is that, to
_____________________________________________________. Adolescents view the world as
hostile when they get into arguments and receive bad grades after playing such games.
Conflict
Conflict is perceived as an
_______________________________________________________________________________.
A Social Trap is a situation in which the conflicting parties, by each rationally pursuing their
self-interest, become caught in
___________________________________________________________.
A Game of Social Trap
By ________________________________________________ and not trusting others, we
____________________________.
Enemy Perceptions
People in conflict form diabolical images of one another.
Psychology of Attraction
o _____________________________________: Geographic nearness is a powerful
predictor of friendship. Repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases their attraction
(mere exposure effect).
Psychology of Attraction
.
________________________________________: Once proximity affords contact, the
next most important thing in attraction is ___________________________________________.
Psychology of Attraction
o Similarity: _____________________________________________________ the bond of
attraction to strengthen.
Romantic Love
__________________________________: An aroused state of intense positive absorption in
another, usually present at the beginning of a love relationship.
___________________________________: A deep, affectionate attachment we feel for those
with whom our lives are intertwined.
Altruism
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An
__________________________________________________________________________________
______.
Bystander Effect
Tendency of ____________________________________________ likely to give aid if other
bystanders are present.
Bystander Intervention
The decision-making process for bystander intervention.
The Norms for Helping
_________________________________________: Our social behavior is an exchange process.
The aim is to maximize benefits and minimize costs.
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Reciprocity Norm: The expectation that we should return help and not harm those who have
helped us.
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Social–Responsibility Norm: Largely learned, it is a norm that tells us to help others when
they need us even though they may not repay us.
Peacemaking
Superordinate Goals are shared goals that override differences among people and require
their cooperation.
Peacemaking
____________________________________________________________________________
(GRIT): This is a strategy designed to decrease international tensions. One side recognizes
mutual interests and initiates a small conciliatory act that opens the door for reciprocation by
the other party.
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